Democrat Senate hopeful Graham Platner has weathered the news about his tattoo and past Reddit posts, as a new poll shows he maintains a substantial lead in his race with incumbent Governor Janet Mills for their party’s nod to take on U.S. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) next year.
The 20-point advantage seen in survey of Maine voters by a progressive group suggests Platner’s double-digit besting of Mills first seen in a University of New Hampshire poll in mid-October has some serious staying power.
According the survey of 1,482 likely voters – with an oversample of 630 Democrats – the political novice Platner would win the support of 58 percent compared to longtime Maine politician Mills’ 38 percent were the primary held tomorrow. Conducted by Z to A Research for the Progressive Congressional Campaign Committee, the poll has even more good news for the young combat veteran who currently serves as harbormaster for the Hancock County town of Sullivan.
An overwhelming 93 percent of Democrats know Platner by name, which is somewhat astonishing given he’s only been on the Maine political radar for four months. Also, among Democrat primary voters, 40 percent have a very favorable opinion of him versus only 31 percent who intensely like Mills.
Platner’s cumulative unfavorable rating is also five points lower than Mills (15:20) among the same group of critical, likely voters.
With seven months to go until their party’s primary, only two percent of Democrat voters say they are still undecided, suggesting that minds have already been made up quite early in the contest.
Beyond the numbers themselves, the reason why this matters is that, within 24 hours of party boss favorite Mills entering the race, a torrent of negative opposition research on Platner suddenly and mysteriously appeared in the national media.
First there were his impolitic posts on Reddit disparaging rural Mainers as dumb racists and suggesting that rape victims bore some responsibility for the crimes that befell them if they’d been extremely inebriated at the time. Then there was the whooplah about a skull and crossbones resembling the Nazi Totenkopf tattoo Platner had inked on his chest while an active duty Marine on shore leave.
But the 41-year-old oyster farmer took these broadsides head on, apologizing for the old posts which he said were penned by a less mature man still recovering from the trauma of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, and having the tattoo covered over with a leaping wolf.
If the new poll is any indication, that approached worked. Very few Maine Democrats, it seems, care much about what Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer – who pleaded with Mills to enter the race – thinks.
Going forward, Mills will likely have to change her strategy from one that relies on high-level leaks and the fawning acquiescence of state-level press (the largest of whom received actual payments from her administration) to a more effective and direct challenge of Platner.
In his town hall meetings, Platner has been unapologetically leftist in his calls for Medicare for all, an all-out assault on America’s billionaires, and now a desire to see the Trump administration brought to trial for war crimes committed in its operations against South American narco-traffickers.
Mills, considered a centrist by the progressive flank in her own caucus in Augusta, may refocus the debate on which Democrat candidate stands a stronger chance of defeating moderate Republican Susan Collins in the general election in a state where independent voters outnumber either Democrats of Republicans.
Substantial focus has been paid on high-level staff changes in Platner’s operation in recent months. That type of attention may now shift to the lagging Mills campaign operation.
